Former Amazon employee shares how return-to-office policy impacted caregivers

Business Insider

After Amazon’s five day return to office policy went into effect, many employees were forced to leave the company. We spoke with Jay Gorsica, a former Amazon employee who had to leave because he is a full-time caregiver for his wife.

Transcript

00:00After the five-day RTO announcement, I knew that my time was limited and I needed to find my own way out and find another job.

00:07My name's Jay Gorsica. I was with Amazon for about seven years and eight months, most recently a design engineer.

00:13I became a caregiver for my wife. She suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on the night of her birthday in August of 2022.

00:21This was really close to the time that RTO was first announced.

00:25She doesn't have the use of a right arm, limited use of her right leg, and has a permanent tracheostomy.

00:29Which I helped take care of. RTO 5 announcement dropped last year.

00:34I would say across the board, there was a good bit of outrage and confusion.

00:37There were a lot of people who took jobs with Amazon specifically on the clause that it was a remote position.

00:43The relocation option was always tricky for us in particular because I did not want to compromise on her healthcare situation,

00:51not being able to find the right doctors or the right specialist or being in scenarios where there was going to be obnoxiously long wait times.

00:57When it comes to employees being caregivers and working for large companies,

01:01especially ones that are going with hardcore attendance, mandates, relocation, making statements that are very blanket in nature,

01:08a lot of us don't have a choice in the matter.

01:10All we want is some flexibility and some consideration, a little bit of humanity for our situation.

01:16We have an existing full-time job outside of work that we don't get to quit.

01:20It never stops. There's no time off.

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